Bellatrix
by AshNox
Summary: Bella listened for the waves that beat against the walls of Azkaban. But she never heard them. Sometimes she listened to the screams and wondered if they were Rudolfs. Sometimes she didn't realize they were her own.


**Disclaimer: Fanfiction based on the Harry Potter series, which belongs to J K Rowling.**

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~o0o~

**Bellatrix**

Bellatrix Lestrange was insane. It would be strange to survive twelve years in Azkaban and be anything but insane, but Bella had been mad before Azkaban.

She was staring at her reflection in a dusty looking glass.

In the time now, her hair was thin and lost in places.

Her face was so haggard her skin looked stretched across the bones underneath. Bella could see her skull. The longer she looked the stranger the image became. She could see the bones changing, her eyes hollowing deeper and deeper. When she blinked the image didn't change back.

Bella liked the way she looked.

She looked how she felt inside.

Sometimes, in Azkaban, where there were no mirrors, she would sit and look at Sirius's face, looking at the years of ruin on his pale skin, and his watchful silver eyes.

Sometimes for hours.

Maybe for days. It was hard to remember now.

Before Azkaban, Bella had been beautiful. So beautiful that Muggles would do anything for Bella, because she was so beautiful.

So beautiful.

The mirror hag face cracked into a manic yellow toothed grin. There was a broken tooth at the front, split right in two.

Bella picked at it with a long finger nail, getting a strange thrill from the sharp slicing pain, and looking at the weird shades of brown, orange and black inside the cavity.

So beautiful.

She smiled again, thinking about weird Muggle values.

Bellatrix looked like her father. Like Sirius. Like Andi and Regelus and Wallaburga.

Even the Half-bloods knew what her face meant.

But Muggles didn't.

Muggles thought she was so beautiful.

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~o0o~

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Twelve years is a long time.

Bella does not think about Azkaban in years because there are no clocks or calendars in Azkaban.

Bella was born in 1951.

She was sent away to boarding school in 1962 when she was only eleven years old.

She was the eldest. Her sister Andi was nine and Cissy was eight. Sirius was three.

The Blacks were a close family.

Bella was not used to other people.

She was not used to being away from her people.

She was not very strong.

And she was only eleven.

Bella didn't like school.

The teachers hated her.

The other children feared her.

The brave ones mocked her.

No one looked after her.

Bellatrix did not like Hogwarts.

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In 1973 Bella left Hogwarts and married her husband, Rudolfus.

She was nineteen.

Rodulfus was a friend of the family.

Of her father.

They didn't have any children.

If they had, Bella would have drowned them in a bucket of water.

Like kittens.

She remembered the kittens being drowned.

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Rudolf was a Death Eater.

But Bella was a better one.

The war began when Bella was in school.

All her married years Bella fought in the war.

She didn't like Hogwarts.

She didn't like her husband, either.

~o0o~

In 1981 Bella was sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban.

She was twenty nine.

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Before Azkaban times recorded itself in years.

In Azkaban Bella marked the passage of time with a line on the wall at each sunrise or maybe at each sunset.

She scratched a mark with her fingernail.

Sometimes with her finger.

Some of the lines were white but some of them were dried blood.

There were three lines on the wall when Bella celebrated her thirtieth Birthday.

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She could hear the waves crashing against the walls beneath Azkaban.

She could hear the seagulls.

Bella hummed 'Happy Birthday' to herself.

After a little while she cried.

And then she went to sleep.

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Sirius was an animagus.

Bella would like to be an animagus.

There was a great bird inside her that needed to break free and fly away from Azkaban.

It needed to find its people.

Bella needed to find her people.

Azkaban was lonelier than a boarding school at eleven years old, where even the sixteen and seventeen year old boys want to punish you being who you are, and the teachers wish they could watch but are obliged to walk away and pretend they haven't seen.

.

Blacks are not good without their people.

They are not used to being alone.

Sometimes Bella shouts to Rudolf.

Sometimes she thinks the screaming she hears is his.

Sometimes she laughs herself silly hoping that its his.

Sometimes she cries for him and pushes her hands so far through the bars her shoulder stays purple with bruises.

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She tried to touch the Dementors, to see what they feel like.

Sometimes she bites herself, to remember what it feels like to be touched.

Sometimes she rakes her fingers through her hair, pretending it is Andi's comb.

Sometimes she yanks at her hair and pretends her mother is shouting at her about knots and about looking nice when family friends are coming.

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For a long time she doesn't know the dog is Sirius.

There is no time in Azkaban.

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She thinks the dog is The Grim.

It looks like The Grim.

It looks at her with silver eyes, that are the same as her own, as her fathers eyes.

It looks like it might be one of her people.

And why shouldn't The Grim be one of her people?

Bella is like The Grim.

The Angel of Death.

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But the dog is not The Grim and it has not come to take her away from Azkaban.

It just sits and stares with its Black eyes.

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She tries to coax it to the bars with a torn piece of rat.

There is not much food in Azkaban.

But there is even less touch.

Bella wants to touch the dog so much that when it comes to the bars she grips it with all her might, uncut nails snap, embedded in its flesh as she claws into it, keeping the dog in reach.

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Bella holds the dog for a long time.

She keeps it against the bars.

It doesn't try to get away.

Dogs, like people, die from loneliness.

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When she can get a grip on its face Bella tugs and claws it through the bars.

Bella feels over the dogs muzzle again and again, stroking its soft fur and crying into its neck.

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Twelve years is a long time.

Eleven years, Bella had, of childhood.

Seven years at Hogwarts.

Eleven years of marriage.

And twelve years in Azkaban.

And each time was its own little lifetime.

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Bella had been asleep on the floor when the dog changed into Sirius.

She had been very surprised.

And she had cried.

They had both cried.

A lot.

Sirius was a traitor in the war.

He had betrayed his family.

Which is the worst thing you can do.

He had betrayed her.

And Cissy.

He had betrayed them all.

He had fought against his own blood.

And killed people.

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It was a long time ago.

Sirius cried for his friends that Bella had tortured.

Sometimes he hit her.

Sometimes she hit him.

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But all the other people were gone.

The bars of Azkaban kept everyone out.

And they both had to stay there till they were dead.

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There was no future.

No other men walked the prison of Azkaban in animagus form.

Only Sirius.

Because he was a Black.

And Blacks are unstoppable.

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Sometimes they talked about the people they both had known.

The ones Sirius had loved and Bella had tried to kill.

The ones Bella had loved and Sirius had tried to kill.

Sometimes they talked about their childhood homes.

About Cygnus, who had wanted a son and was as mad as both of them.

Sometimes they talked about Cissy who they both had loved.

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Sometimes they laid their hearts bare about all the people they had ever loved and all the sorrows in the world.

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Sometimes they listened to the quiet between the other inmates screams, when Sirius believed he could still hear the waves crashing endlessly against the walls of Azkaban, and Bella heard nothing, because the sound was not there, or because it had become too familiar to recognize.

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Sometimes Bella told him that the Dark Lord would come to rescue her, because she was useful to him.

Sometimes Sirius told her Remus would come to rescue him, because he loved him.

But Bella's hopes were higher.

And she was the only one who was right.

.

But Sirius didn't need rescuing.

Because he was a Black.

And Black's are unstoppable.

Sirius just left.

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He didn't say goodbye.

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Bella listened for the waves that beat against the walls of Azkaban.

But she never heard them.

Sometimes she listened to the screams and wondered if they were Rudolfs.

Sometimes she didn't realize they were her own.

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She wondered how old she was.

She wondered how much time had passed in Azkaban.

She wondered how much more time had to pass before it was enough.

.

.

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Bella picked up the mirror to carry with her, the hag face swinging out of sight.

She looked out at the sunshine and hummed a little tune to herself.

As she stepped out of the room she sang its taunting words happily to herself.

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A little dance, with a twirl, joined the music as she waltzed down the passageway to the open door.

"_I killed Sirius Black_." She sang to herself, as she stepped out into the brilliant sunlight. "_I killed Sirius Black_." And she wiped a funny trickle of tears off her pale cheeks and sang it again, for effect.

"_I killed Sirius Black._"


End file.
